Not Like Me

For the last few weeks I've been in a real quandary about whether to vote based solely on issues, on principle -- or out of fear.

I've always found the idea of strategic voting distasteful. I don't think we should vote based on likeability or electability or whatever.

I want to cast my vote for Ralph Nader because I'm much more in line with him than with the Democratic Party (which Kevin Phillips, in an interview with Bill Moyers last week, described as having lunch-bucket flesh while its soul was wearing a pin-striped suit). I believe we need to break the two-party monopoly. I also believe you should vote for who you want, rather than the person you think other people would be most likely to accept or get behind.

At the same time, I really want to cast a vote against Sarah Palin.

Now, I knew she wasn't my kind of person from the get-go. And putting a woman on a Republican ticket would never get me (a woman) to vote Republican. But I'm alarmed by the way she's making people act.

I don't have a problem with her teenage daughter being pregnant. I don't think it makes her a bad mother; these things happen. However, I don't like talking heads like Bill O'Reilly and James Dobson making exceptions for her in their blanket "teen sex is causing the downfall of society!!!" rhetoric.

And what I really don't like -- what really, downright scares me -- is the "but she's like me!" argument.

Please! Stop and think! Do you think you would make a good Vice President of the United States? Despite my education, despite my level-headedness, despite all my experience working in the public sector, and despite my near-pathological tight-fistedness with money, I'm quite sure I would make a terrible Vice President. No. What I want is someone in the White House who's much, much better, much smarter than me. Who knows gobs about economics and the history of the Middle East and who's been to at least one non-English speaking country.

Is that too much to ask? Is it truly a crazy, far-out demand that proves I'm out of touch with Red State Values or Mainstream America or whatever? Please tell me. I'm starting to feel like I've lost my marbles.